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Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. A Beil & Howell information Company 300 North Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor. Ml 48106-1346 USA 313'761-4700 800 521-0600 Order Number 9B16947 A comparative study of reductionist tendencies in the arts Cassidy, Neil Patrick, D.M.A. The Ohio State University, 1994 Copyright ©1994 by Cassidy, Neil Patrick. All rights reserved. UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF REDUCTIONIST TENDENCIES IN THE ARTS DOCUMENT Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Musical Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Neil P. Cassidy, B.M. ***** The Ohio State University 1 994 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Thomas Wells Richard Blatti Marc Ainger Adviser School of Music Copyright by Neil P. Cassidy 1994 VITA April 2f 1957 ........................ Bom Jersey City, New Jersey 1989....................................... Bachelor of Music, The University of Texas at San Antonio MAJOR FIELD OF STUDY Music Composition TABLE OF CONTENTS VITA ....................................................................................................................... ii INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................1 PAINTING.............................................................................................................. 4 SCULPTURE.......................................................................................................... 7 ARCHITECTURE.................................................................................................. 10 MUSIC .................................................................................................................... 12 DANCE.....................................................................................................................20 CONCLUSION....................................................................................................... 23 EPILOGUE.............................................................................................................. 24 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................................... 28 INTRODUCTION Not long ago I started researching Minimalism with the hope that it might support the idea of postmodernism as an outgrowth of, rather than a rebellion against, modernism. My idea was basically this. As today's 'popular* Minimalism1 can be seen as a generally postmodern notion, the overtly reductionist tendencies that I saw as at the roots of these practices seemed to me to be a peculiarly modernist project. In exploring the connection between today's mainstream Minimalism and the earlier, highly reductionist work, the postmodern may then be seen as a continuation, in this sense, of modernism, rather than as a separate, breakaway period coming after modernism. What interested me in Minimalism was the reductionist attitude toward materials and its clarity of form. I am more interested here in these two features as general stylistic traits rather than in any sort of chronological framework for an historic movement. With this in mind the works considered come from a 1 'Popular' Minimalism as mentioned here refers to the repetitive, pulse oriented music of composers like Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Michael Nyman, et al. Although it was in the paintings of the early 1960's, and slightly later in sculpture, that the term "Minimalism" first found currency, it was in selected music circles that the term held on during the 1970’s until finding a more widespread usage in the 1980's. 1 much broader span of time than is generally associated with Minimalism in the arts. As a point of departure individual artists and selected works within a particular discipline are looked at through the writing of Clement Greenberg. Greenberg was an influential critic whose writings exerted great influence on both artists and critics alike. Greenberg, dealing with the essence of 'pure' painting became, for me, a guide for exploring the extreme reductionist attitude that according to Greenberg, characterizes the art of the late modern era. In particular the following quotation: It follows that a modernist work of art must try, in principle, to avoid dependence upon any order of experience not given in the most essentially construed nature of its medium. This means, among other things, renouncing illusion and explicitness. The arts are to achieve concreteness, "purity'', by acting solely in terms of their separate and irreducible selves.2 I believe that high modern concerns as voiced by Greenberg show themselves in much of what I came to think of as an 'historic' Minimalism. For me historic minimalism became characterized by this search for the essentials of a discipline, a move toward self- definition through a highlighting of the medium. If there is any singular driving force behind my approaches and conclusions in the following paper it is this. In highlighting the medium through the avoidance of content and referentiality on the part of the artist, the 2 Clement Greenberg, "The New Sculpture", An and Culture: Critical Essays. Beacon Press, Boston, 1961. p. 139. 3 artwork became more 'objective' in its nature, allowing, according to Greenberg, for each art "to achieve concreteness." I began to look at certain practices in painting, architecture, sculpture, dance and music and tried to see how I could apply Greenberg. In painting and sculpture, which was what Greenberg was actually talking about, the work that relates was easier to locate and discuss in his terms. In the other disciplines, however, there is always a certain amount of apples and oranges comparison that takes place. Perhaps this type of comparison may be thought by some to be a shortcoming of this essay. With this in mind let me say that I am not holding that say, the International style of architecture of the 20's and 30’s relates exactly to Greenberg or minimal sculpture or the early music of LaMonte Young but, rather, that ideas of abstraction, reduction and objectivism surface in all the disciplines at one time or another and lend themselves to discussion in this context. For myself, this is the merit of the paper. PAINTING Greenberg says that pure painting aspires to be about nothing other than itself. In its pure form it would be would paint and flatness, devoid of outward expression, defining itself through the use of the medium's essential materials. Accompanying the Greenbergian search for purity is the idea that expression in a work is not an essential aspect of an artwork. In this light referentiality, allegory, metaphor and content are seen as ’extra' attributes of a work, detracting from their purity. The use of the term 'purity' may at first seem vague and of little use. Allan Kaprow reminds us that It is sometimes easier to see what a certain term means by comparing it to a related term - in this case, a contrary. When we use the wordpure , we have in mind physical and structural attributes - like clear; uncontaminated by admixture of foreign substances; unweakened by vitiiating material; formal (rational, nonempirical). We also associate pure with moral qualities such as chastity, cleanliness, refinement, virtue, holiness and spirituality. Finally, a metaphysical connotation is involved, for purity suggests something beyond innocence or the clergy, namely that what is abstract, essential, authentic, true, absolute, perfect, utter, sheer.3 3 Allan Kaprow. ■Impurity", Essavs on the The Blurring of Art and Life, edited by Jeff KellcyUnivcrsity of California Press, Berkeley 1993. p. 27-28. 4 5 Two things should be kept in mind here. The first is that it will be difficult to fully locateany work as being 'pure'. To even approach a work with such a labeling is to contaminate it, a sort of Heisenberg principle as applied to artwork. Secondly, and our only hope, is to locate works along a continuum of impurity to purity. This is where Kaprow’s suggestion of comparing purity to its contrary notion of impurity is helpful, that is to say a work is more or less pure than another work. There were many painters of the late 1940's/1950's/early 1960’s that produced work exhibiting